1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a preprocessing device and method for recognizing image characters, and in particular, to a device and method for correcting a skew of an object in an input image before recognizing image characters.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a preprocessing operation is performed to recognize image characters. The “preprocessing operation” refers to an operation of processing an image before recognition of the characters in the image. The image preprocessing operation can include an operation of determining whether or not an input image is appropriate for character recognition, an operation of correcting the skew of an object in an input image, an operation of properly correcting the size of an input image, and an operation of binarizing an image signal (i.e. transforming an image function into a binary image) so that characters of the image signal can be recognized.
A device for recognizing image characters generally recognizes characters from an image. Since the image is photographed by a camera, an object in the image may be skewed. Therefore, in order to increase a recognition rate, it is preferable to correct a skewed object in the mage before performing a recognition operation.